ABOUT US

Steve Friess is a 2011-12 recipient of the prestigious Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan, where he will be studying the impact of the rapid expansion of Vegas-style gaming on Asia. He's a podcaster, author and Vegas-based freelance journalist who writes regularly for USA Today, The New York Times, Newsweek and many others. His column, "The Strip Sense" appears every Thursday in the Las Vegas Weekly. His books include "Gay Vegas" from Huntington Press and Knopf Mapguides' "Las Vegas."Friess co-hosts the weekly celebrity interview podcast The Strip Podcast "The Strip" with his husband, Miles Smith, the executive producer at KSNV-TV, Channel 3. For four years, Steve also co-hosted The Petcast with Las Vegas Sun education scribe Emily Richmond.

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Sunday, February 20, 2011

It seems the fine folks at CityCenter are ready to unload a whole bunch of damaged or excess, well, crap. I spotted this tiny ad in today's paper, and it turns out the sale is 11 a.m. on Monday, Feb. 21, at this website.

As the notice indicates, the auction is mainly a sale of various pieces of room furnishings and hardware that were intended or have been deployed at Aria, Vdara, Mandarin Oriental or Veer. It's a Web-only event in every way, including that there's no opportunity for any on-site inspection of merchandise.

There are 1,076 lots, and you can review them here although there's no suggested auction minimum prices listed in the catalog. There's stuff like this 65-by-38-by-20-inch tub...

...or what the charm would be in buying these chairs for which "fabric needs to be cleaned, one chair has tear, one has cigarette burn."

I honestly have no clue what this -- described as an "e-tray" -- is:

But the thing I truly, truly cannot live without, is...

...a "Kirin Dragon." That beaut there is a 7.5-foot-tall fiberglass statue. I can't imagine where it was supposed to go or why, with this on hand, they threw that crappy Henry Moore into the pocket park.

Obviously, this auction isn't really intended for ordinary people, but it's fun to browse and watch anyway. Nothing, so far as I could tell, had any resort logos or branding anywhere. But if any of you "go" to this and buy something, totally let me know.

THE STRIP FINALE

Below are links to the final episodes and last week of special editions of The Strip Podcast. Right-click on any of these to save and hear at your leisure. Otherwise, click on them and they should play. Enjoy, and thanks for the wonderful years.